XRia: He was just different, you know? He knew all kinds of stuff, an'... I thought I'd be different too. Wilder. More grown up. But instead I'm all stressed out an' sneakin' round an' my friends teasing me that I got no boyfriend and I can't tell them, an' nothing changed. My life is over and it was for nothing.Zeke: 'My life is over. Madre del Santos (mother of the saints), don't let me have been this whiny and stupid at seventeen.Ria: I am not whiny!Zeke: Sooooo....Ria: Or stupid! I gotta spend the rest of my life a freak, weighed down with some kid, watched over by these cangrejos --Zeke: No you don't.Ria: What choice do I have? Name me one!Zeke: Move. They got aliens living on O'Donnelly, honey; you think they gonna care about a Greenie girl?Ria: ...I --Zeke: It's the cangrejo part that bothers you, Stroud would take you kid an' all; they ain't half so fuckin' stir-crazy there. Loose the kid and even the Tallboys'd have you. You ain't sure where you wanna be? Ve de paseo (go walkabout). The Blues'd foot it for you. Got a job you always wanted? Anything you always wanted to see? Anything you wanna --Ria: Okay, okay. I get the point.Zeke: Go to school -- real school, not the government crapfeed they got on the Wharves -- grab a Kariami stake, tour with a gateboat --Ria: I said I get the point.

Mrrr. You know, when I write, I try to avoid the sort of craptastic soap-opera pileup that my workplace is currently experiencing as unrealistic and overdone. You fail at originality, universe.

Comic references: O'Donnelly Isle, better known as the Imperial Isle, is the seat of the Imperial government and -- as Zeke suggests -- very, very cosmopolitan. Both Stroud and the Tallboys have been mentioned before; all you really need to know here is that they're primarily Sunlander states. 'Ve de paseo' means, essentially, to go walkabout. Kariami is the wealthier and better-established of the two legal extrasolar colonies; it's extraordinarily difficult to get citizenship there, and impossible for non-citizens to own land, but an Imperial citizenship opens more doors than most. A gateboat is any weftgate ship, mercenary or trader, that routinely moves outside the three systems with human settlements: a risky and not always profitable venture, but with a great deal of appeal and romance for some.

Zeke imitating a teenage girl in panel one is, alas, something your imagination will have to fill in for itself. Stupid limitations of textual mediums...

Her crewmates get to have simple bar hookups. But not Commander Elena Shaw. Within the day her ex-boyfriend is dead, the police are framing her new lover, and Central Corps is on the brink of war with the PSI....